The survey, conducted in November 2011, showed that 40% of Russian academics paid between US$30 and US$800 for publication services, with 1/3 paying more than US$150. While these fees may not seem high to Western audiences, they are proportionately large given the meager salaries of Russian academics.

Russia’s relatively weak peer-review culture is faulted for this race to expediency. The report — which comes from the Center for International Higher Eduction — is not written in perfect English, which sometimes provides clearer insights than the polished writing you’d get from a good American or British writer. For instance, the following sentences say a great deal about the peer-review culture in Russia:

There is a stereotype (that many teachers from regional universities share) that the best nation-wide journals will not publish them, no matter how good their article might have been. For many people this is confirmed by the negative experience of getting one or two rejections. These rejections are likely caused by the low quality of the submitted papers. However, university teachers, used to local university practices where peer review and peer discussion of research results are not common, normally don’t trust the process.

The Ministry of Education and Science in Russia monitors research output and rewards productivity with salary increases, contract extensions, or promotion. The resultant pressures have created a publications service industry increasingly focused on getting academics to the desired outcome in as brief a process as possible:

. . . an important feature of the publication process — peer review and selection for publication on the basis of their quality — is not necessarily followed. Many journals do not check the research quality but rather publish all material presented in proper formatting and paid for. As journal editors put it, “We have a fair policy — if we take your money, your paper will be published.”

One of the most significant shifts in scholarly publishing over the past few years has been the rise of the author-pays open access mega-journals, which operate on the premise that all methodologically sound papers should be published and freely available. Has this improved scholarship and research reporting? Time will tell, but it’s no secret that I’m skeptical. The conclusion of this report from Russia echoes some of the outcomes academics should consider when publication becomes a service easily secured and an h-index is something readily manipulated:

. . . publications will remain just a means for reporting, rather than the mechanism of research communication, promotion of new ideas and a true measure of academic performance.

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

Discussion

Kent – I share your skepticism. My opinion is that as a pure business model, in most cases, Open Access cannot work. The one way it might work is the pay-to-publish model where a high percentage pf submissions are published (ala PLoS). This makes me very nervous as it seems to weaken scholarly research and opens the door for the type of “predatory” behavior we’re seeing more and more of. As a philosophy I can somewhat support OA. As a business model I’m not sure I can. I’ve said in the past that I am NOT a researcher and do not claim to be as knowledgeable on some of these topics as others who contribute on a regular basis here. If I am off base on some of my thinking I welcome any opinions and lessons others may have to offer.

Actually it sounds like they have a two tiered system, with highly competitive national journals, probably publishing stuff from the top research centers, and second tier author pays journals for everyone else. I can see such a system working here. A lot of people do not need high ranking publication, just publication. For example, the majority of published authors publish only one paper in their lifetime.

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The mission of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is to advance scholarly publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members through education, collaboration, and networking. SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments in publishing.

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